The American – Henry James, 1877 ★★★

Undone in the City of Love

It’s not the most riveting or engaging novel ever written, but Henry James’ The American does boast one of literature’s great put-downs: “I mean to show the world that however bad I may be, you are not quite the people to say it.”

Before there was such a thing as air travel, Henry James was defining what could be called the transatlantic literary genre. Putting Americans in Europe and having them figure out what was what seems a regular theme of his, if novels like Portrait Of A Lady, Daisy Miller, and this are any indication.

It’s an odd thing reading an American author to learn about European mores, but James is unique that way.

This early James novel centers on an American named Newman, a Civil War veteran who has done very well for him in business but now seeks a different path. “I have been my master all my life, and I’m tired of it,” is how he puts it to an old friend. Settling down in Paris, he quickly sets about pursuing a young, aristocratic widow named Claire de Cintré. At first, all seems well enough, especially given Newman’s sizable bankroll, but soon he is tripped up by the Old-World culture around him. Can Newman win over Claire, or will he succeed only in making life worse for everyone by trying?

I’m not a big James fan. From the books I've read, he seems given to contrived plots and narrow narratives. The American, as his first novel, offers a good example. Newman is presented to us as a self-made man of dispassionate sensibility, yet he plays out here as too gullible and trusting to be believed. The narrative is run like a railroad, hurtling its characters to overly-deterministic fates.

Yet The American also features James’ great strength, the way he gets so deeply into his characters and draws from them subtle tangents that connect to the larger experience of life. There’s really only one theme in this novel - naïve American gets a rough education - and it’s not that compelling, but James does use his secondary characters to sometimes interesting and unrelated ends.

The mystery at the heart of The American is [SPOILER ALERT] Newman’s ultimate rejection by Claire’s circle and her acceptance of their verdict. It’s a fascinating situation given that a lot seems to be deliberately left out by James. Newman is told by the wife of an American friend that while he is rich enough, he had to be sacrificed “for an idea.” We have some idea what this “idea” may be, but James doesn’t spell it out and it’s left vague all the way through to the end. Something to do with aristocratic pretense, apparently, and the disdain of the Old World for the New. But it's incomplete on the page.

Henry James, around the time he published The American. Photo credit: The Statesman.com.

Meanwhile, Newman is also practiced upon by a young Frenchwoman who paints rather bad copies of great art but still manages to get Newman to pay her a lot of money for canvases she has no intention of producing. He's not interested in her romantically, so again this seems a bit implausible. As a subplot, it has potential, especially when we meet the woman's long-suffering Pa, but despite crossing into the main plot for a while, it never develops into anything useful. As with Claire’s family, we are left wondering at Newman’s thick-headedness.

A lot of people seem annoyed by the novel's ending. Yet I more or less enjoyed it. James played with my expectations in a way that seemed fair in retrospect, if not altogether pleasant. As a materialist man of means, Newman is surprisingly appealing as presented here by James, the expatriate American who found his home in European high society.

But that's also the problem. Newman is in some ways too good a character. One doesn't just root for him but wonder at how he could possibly come up short. His adversaries, as the novel develops, lack the basic substance that makes for involving drama. They are entirely too venial and nasty. Even Claire lacks for personality. We are told she is beautiful and she must be, because she's otherwise mighty dull. Only one French person seems worthy of Newman’s friendship, Claire's carefree brother Valentin. Scenes featuring the two characters resound with a kind of vibrancy the rest of the novel doesn't quite offer, with Valentin alternately teasing and championing his quiet American friend.

James presents a romantic novel that is rather unromantic. "When the heart has a heavy weight upon it, it hardly matters whether the weight be of gold or lead" is one of many fine lines in the book, but it points to a problem of an author not much engaged in his protagonist's aspirations.

Overall, The American kind-of, sort-of works. I like the way it rounds into a kind of confrontation between Old and New World, and found Newman's story interesting in places. If it lacks for emotional engagement, I didn't feel that short-changed given my experience with the author.